


Ogre

by Cramp



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-16 22:20:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3504869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cramp/pseuds/Cramp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nero’giruk’azol, a Chiss mercenary working on the Smuggler's Moon, hears back from a job interview. Unfortunately for his current employer, it happens at a rather inconvenient time for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ogre

Giruk’azol, of the shamed and exiled Chiss family Nero, scanned the room with his ruby eyes. The atmosphere was heavy, loaded with tension, caught in the breathless moment of potential that could not possibly endure. His presence was an alien intrusion into the world of the apartment. The music was blaring but epiphenomenal, ignored and invisible.

Directly to his left, a teenage Mirialan girl trying to crouch below a table - she was barely dressed in wisps of white gauze. Decidedly not a threat. Ahead of him, a cybernetically enhanced Rodian, proboscis mouth hanging open, hands lowering to his hips. Armed. And to the right, a human surprised in the act of lifting noodles towards his face. No doubt also armed.

A frozen tableau, but to Ogiruka’s narrowed eyes, every minute movement the actors made were cracks splitting through the ice, soon precipitating cataclysmic evolution. An avalanche caused by the touch of a single snowflake. They all knew who he was, what he represented.

Ogiruka breathed out, to steady his hand.

The Rodian went for his blaster. The searing green bolt took him high in the chest, spinning him around before his fingers could even brush the polished grip of his pistol. The human had shoved his fork into his mouth at the flash of the first shot, but was pinned back against his chair by the second.

Ogiruka raised the smoking barrel of his blaster. His size and strength made him dangerous, but it was his speed that made him deadly. Muscles he had piled on with training, the blistering speed of his hands was his gift. It was why he favoured the pistol over the higher calibre rifles or carbines, to faster translate reaction into action.

Satisfied that the whimpering Mirialan was the only remaining agent, he tilted his head and called back through the door he had just entered from.

‘All clear.’

A slight human entered. He was dressed in form-fitting Trandoshen leather, scaled and shining, and wearing a habitual smirk. Ogiruka’s shoulders hunched at the sight of his employer.

Nedak surveyed the room, hands on his hips.

‘Good work as always, Ogre,’ the gangster pronounced, and Ogiruka’s well-worn frown deepened at the butchery of his core name.

‘Well hello there little lady!’

Nedak had found the Mirialan and was leaning over the table she cowered beneath. His smile was predatory in a way that was familiar to his Chiss bodyguard.

‘Aren’t you a pretty bird! Shouldn’t be cooped up in such a second-rate establishment. Tell you what, you ever want to make the money your tidy green ass deserves, you come looking for me, okay?’

The girl couldn’t do much more than nod and take the card Nedak proffered. No doubt she had barely been on Nar Shaddaa five minutes before one of the flesh merchants had snared her. Ogiruka had seen it happen a hundred times, knew their methods - how they baited them with flashy grins and how they trapped them with spice and chains.

_I am not unworthy_ , he told himself for the thousandth time.

_Just because a Vishi knife digs through dirt, it does not make it any less an elegant, well-forged weapon._

But the word-worn mantra sounded hollow in the face of his employer. Nedak Laska was a vile excuse for a sentient - cruel for pleasure’s sake and small minded with his petty kingdom of vice and violence. He dealt in anything there was a profit in no matter how base or villainous its character. Narcotic spices, one-sided gladiator spectacles and forced prostitution were the least of it - the things Ogiruka had seen in his time as one of Nedak’s enforcers had borne in him a deep dislike for the human.

But there were few opportunities for a Chiss exiled to a planet of thieves and murderers, and discipline without service filled no bellies. After he had pawned the last of his family armour for a pittance and was left with nothing but his holdout blaster, like so many of the desperate poor on the Smuggler’s Moon, he had found himself at the door of the underworld’s gangsters, selling the last thing he had left.

Dignity.

He hunched behind Nedak, somehow looking squat despite his stature. His hair was shaggy and unkempt and the armour Nedak had equipped him with was scuffed and blast-scorched. He had let himself sink into his nickname and could no longer summon the energy to fight his diminution.

‘Come on, Ogre, we have an appointment with the proprietor.’

Nedak pointed imperiously at the door at the far end of the room and Ogiruka slid past him. The great insult of his role was not just that his skills and training were put to the use of an inch-tall tyrant, but that should some goon get the better of him, he would die preserving Nedak. Death did not scare a Chiss but a death for nothing, no great chain of service, no purpose bettered? That was sour.

The door hissed open smoothly and Ogiruka flowed in, pistol leading the way. He appraised the room in a sweep of his gaze, his target having not even bothered to hide herself. She was seated in a large comfortable chair, her long legs crossed lazily at her ankles. She was a shade lighter than him, but not of his people. Her grey skin and hairless head was marked with aggressive black tattoos, her eyes white, not red.

‘Chiss. You know you didn’t have to kill my men just to get a meeting with me.’ Vybis drawled, her hard eyes putting the lie to her friendly tone.

Ogiruka kept his pistol trained on her but did not reply. He did not like engaging with these people, feeling like he could avoid their pollution if he just didn’t breathe it in. The Rattataki’s composure impressed him though, it reminded him of his days on Csilla.

It was explained however when a Devonarian appeared from behind her throne, rifle aiming at Ogiruka’s chest. When he flicked his pistol to pointing at the man, a blaster appeared in Vybis’s hand.

Holt. Vybis’s attack hound and a sharpshooter of some renown. Nedak had assured him that Holt was away on business. Ogiruka took a step back, widening his field of fire.

‘Well well! Ain’t this _exciting_!’ said Nedak gleefully, coming round the corner with his own long-barrelled pistol pointing at Vybis. ‘Got ourselves a stand off.’

‘Nedak,’ Vybis began, sounding weary more than worried. ‘You are a parasitic worm grubbing about the rectum of a particularly ill Hutt, you are aware of that, aren’t you.’

Ogiruka knew Nedak could not handle being insulted. He bore his gaze into Holt, synchronising himself with the Devonarian. His breathing, the slight movements of his arms as he steadied the weight of his rifle. If things kicked off - and knowing Nedak they would - Ogiruka would move before Holt even knew that he should. He did not trust that the armour Nedak had equipped him with could withstand a rifle round but he judged that he might survive one shot from Vybis. A lot of people would have picked their targets by order of importance. Ogiruka however, believed in effectiveness and efficiency. No good dropping one target if the other killed you just as dead.

‘If I’m a worm what does that make an upstart bitch like you huh?’ Nedak’s neck was flushing red and he was jabbing his pistol at the Rattataki woman. ‘What the fuck do worms eat eh? Shit? Are you shit, Vybis?’

She shook her head and sighed. ‘Nedak you are always so boring. You’re an old fashioned man-child who doesn’t know what to do as his toys get taken away. Get over it - you’re not relevant any more. This is my territory now.’

‘Your territory!?’ Nedak’s eyes were bulging out. No one who was interested in preserving the vital functions of their body talked to him in that manner. The man had access to an ever-changing stable of psychopaths whose sole joys came from hurting others in a stomach-churning variety of ways. Nedak was about to explode.

Then Ogiruka’s personal communicator chirruped.

It was if his heart stopped beating just as it pounded outwards - his chest felt constricted, his throat tight. There was only one address he had set to give an alert in any circumstances.

Hesitantly, at once nervous and eager, his pistol still trained on Holt, he rotated his left wrist so he could see the screen imbedded in his gauntlet.

‘Uh, is now really the tim-’ Nedak started, his anger deflated by the sheer oddness of the situation. Ogiruka silenced him with a raised finger.

Some time ago he had taken part in... call it a job interview. For weeks he had considered himself rejected by virtue of the lack of response but this...

Nedak had found his anger again. ‘Listen piss stain-’

‘One moment please,’ said Ogiruka, reaffirming the finger. Formal Cheunh was a notoriously subtle and layered language, so he read the message from the Rank-mother again. Finally, as Vybis and Holt exchanged confused glances, he lowered his pistol.

‘What the fuck are you doing?!’ Nedak yelled, now gripping his blaster in both hands, swapping from Holt to Vybis and back again, the alien gangsters smirking.

‘I am extending my resignation, Nedak. Effective immediately.’ Ogiruka said, holstering his pistol.

Vybis barked a laugh. ‘This is too good! You can’t even keep your own bodyguard at your side!’

Beads of worry sweat dripped down Nedak’s brow.

‘What is this? Ogre, wha-’

‘That,’ Ogiruka hissed, ‘is _not_ my name.’

Nedak gaped and then nodded hurriedly. ‘Ogiruka please man! Is it her? Has she got something on you? What’s happening here?’

He felt himself swelling, filling up from inside and he pushed his shoulders back. They no longer felt heavy, no longer felt like his body was weighing him down. His chin lifted and once more he looked down at Nedak, at all of them. The gangster didn’t understand, none of them did. They could not because their universes did not contain the same concepts his did. Pitiful creatures.

It was early yet, the formal induction ceremony weeks away, but he might as well get comfortable with his new name.

‘Not him anymore either, no more Nero’giruk’azol,’ he said, letting the taste of the words linger in his mouth. ‘I am Kiln’giruk’azol of the Chiss.’

Nedak stared blankly at him, at Ngiruka newly forged, but he did not care at all for the gangster’s comprehension. He turned his back on Nedak, striding purposefully towards the exit.

‘Goodbye. I do not think we will meet again.’

‘Wait! I can pay you! You know I am good for it. Whatever she has offered you know I can get you more!’ Nedak yelled, voice cracking at the edges. Ngiruka shook his head.

‘Like all your pathetic breed,’ he gestured at Vybis and Holt with this, ‘You equate wealth to power and a receipt to loyalty. But the marketplace is not where you will find a person’s soul. You will never see that there are higher forces with which to move a man.’

But there was no point in explaining further. It would be like trying teach a Hutt of value - futile.

Nedak’s despair turned to rage then, a blustery storm of spit and bile.

‘I will find you wherever you hide you fuck! I will watch them peel the skin from your c-’

In a motion so smooth and quick it approached physical poetry, Ngiruka drew his blaster and shot Nedak in the knee, holstering again before the gangster could even buckle.

He left Nedak in the care of Vybis and Holt. He knew that she was little better than the human, the same gender of creature, vindictive and petty, but he could not bring himself to care. As he walked from the apartment and made his way towards the spaceport, he shed the accretions of despair and melancholy that had accumulated on him in Nar Shaddaa.

There was nothing he wanted to take with him. No possessions, no items, no memories.

He was free!

    

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
